I have been followed Paul Graham's blog for a while. Even though most of his posts are more "philosophical" than "practical", I find this post regarding "relentlessly resourceful" particularly interesting.
The basic idea of this blog post is that being "relentlessly resourceful" is the key recipe of of being a successful startup founder. I think it is true for the startup itself as well. So I started thinking about how to build a startup (BetterPartners) that is relentlessly resourceful in a way that solves problems by connecting different stakeholders in different sectors together. In order to achieve that, I deliberately designed the service offerings of BetterPartners to be extensile and expandable. We started from one point at the value chain of social impact, which is business advisory, and are planning to enter into the downstream, capital service, of the value chain in the future. Not only in the diversity of offerings, but also in the customer base are we trying to be "resourceful" in a sense that we relentlessly partner with different palyers in the impact community and view them not as customers, but as partners that can facilitate us to solve problems in projects, workshops, fund raisings and more.
I should say it sounds weird that I view Paul's post as an explanation of the success of a startup or an organization, not merely of a founder of the startup. But I do think they both work in the same way. How do you, as the founder, design your organization to be resourceful, tough and resilient? In the process of answering this question, I have gradually understand what I love about & what I should do about BetterPartners.
 |
| Paul Graham, Venture Capitalist & Co-founder of Y Combinator |
The basic idea of this blog post is that being "relentlessly resourceful" is the key recipe of of being a successful startup founder. I think it is true for the startup itself as well. So I started thinking about how to build a startup (BetterPartners) that is relentlessly resourceful in a way that solves problems by connecting different stakeholders in different sectors together. In order to achieve that, I deliberately designed the service offerings of BetterPartners to be extensile and expandable. We started from one point at the value chain of social impact, which is business advisory, and are planning to enter into the downstream, capital service, of the value chain in the future. Not only in the diversity of offerings, but also in the customer base are we trying to be "resourceful" in a sense that we relentlessly partner with different palyers in the impact community and view them not as customers, but as partners that can facilitate us to solve problems in projects, workshops, fund raisings and more.
I should say it sounds weird that I view Paul's post as an explanation of the success of a startup or an organization, not merely of a founder of the startup. But I do think they both work in the same way. How do you, as the founder, design your organization to be resourceful, tough and resilient? In the process of answering this question, I have gradually understand what I love about & what I should do about BetterPartners.
This is a timely and useful link / post. I like your connection between what works for the entrepreneur and what works for a startup in general. I think these qualities are important. Of course, it also is important to have an idea that the market is ready to adopt and to be open to change if signals indicate that change is warranted. Thanks for a thoughtful set of comments.
ReplyDelete- CBB